Plunged into a strange land at twenty-five, Benjamin Moser began an obsessive, decades-long study of the Dutch Masters to set his world right again. He found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions that he was. Why do we make art? What even is art, anyway--and what is an artist? What does it mean to succeed as an artist, and what does it mean to fail? Is art a consolation--or a mortal danger? The Upside-Down World is an invitation to ask these questions, and to turn them on their heads: to look, and then to look again. This is Holland and its great artists as we've never seen them before. 400 pages hc